Jess Smart Smiley makes rad pictures with his bare hands.

He is a #1 bestselling and award-winning creator of 25 books for young readers, and has helped thousands of artists all around the world to write and illustrate their own stories.

Jess has created work for DisneyPixar, Cartoon Network, Penguin Random House, Deseret Book, and more, and has consulted on hundreds of animation, film, tv, comic, and book projects. Jess currently teaches courses on story, writing, illustration, and design for BYU-Idaho, and developing characters and ideas for his next games, books, and other creations.

Jess lives with his wife and children in Utah and is busy filling up his 92nd sketchbook with ideas for new characters, worlds, and stories.

Jess is represented by Andrea Colvin of Andrea Colvin Creative Agency.

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Tools & Materials

SKETCHBOOK / NOTEBOOK

I love me a good Moleskine sketchbook (especially the plain XL sets), but I’m happy with almost any acid-free, archival block of paper. Whether ruled or plain, I inevitably draw in my notebooks and write in my sketchbooks, so I treat them the same.

DRAWING TABLET

Refurbished 12.9″ iPad Pro. I’ve roughed out and illustrated several books and hundreds of finished illustrations, as well as hundreds of animated GIFs using MediBang Paint on my iPad Pro.

SOFTWARE / APPS

I typically use some combination of MediBang Paint, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe InDesign.